


Even to Hades

by Calacious



Category: The Big Valley
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Presumed Dead, Prompt Fic, family love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-21
Updated: 2018-07-21
Packaged: 2019-06-13 18:02:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15370236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Calacious/pseuds/Calacious
Summary: Heath was killed in an explosion in one of their mines. Victoria cannot let herself break down, not in front of her other children. Though they'd only known him a short while, they'd grown to love him like he'd always been one of them.





	Even to Hades

**Author's Note:**

  * For [suerum](https://archiveofourown.org/users/suerum/gifts).



> Written as a birthday present. Happy belated birthday (sorry I couldn't get this written in time for your actual birthday, but I believe birthdays should be celebrated for an entire week).

"I can't believe that he's really gone," Audra said, hand reaching out for her mother's in a bid for comfort. "It's too soon. We were just getting to know him. It's not fair."

Victoria blinked back tears of her own and offered her daughter a watery smile. She needed to be strong for her children, though her heart ached at the loss of Heath. He may not have been hers by blood, but he was hers in every other way, and Audra was right, he'd been taken from them much too soon, much like her husband had. And before he'd really understood how much they all loved and accepted him. It was no mystery to her what had happened, that Heath had put the lives of his brothers, of the miners, before his own, thinking, wrongly, that his life was valued less.

"Come here," Victoria said, drawing her daughter into a hug and letting Audra cry on her shoulder. 

"It isn't right," Nick said, fist opening and closing on nothing. 

There was a noticeable tick in his jaw, one that Victoria knew foretold that an angry outburst was imminent. Of course Nick, stubborn boy that he was, would respond to the loss of Heath with outrage, rather than sorrow. It's how he'd accepted Heath into their fold -- through fist and fury -- it's only fitting that he'd see Heath out of this world in the same manner. 

"No, it isn't right," Jarrod said, voice tight with suppressed emotion. "But punching something or someone isn't going to fix it. It isn't going to bring Heath back to us."

Nick's eyes flashed dangerously, fist clenching at his side, and Victoria raised her head up from where it rested on her daughter's, her own eyes flashing with the same kind of danger that Nick's held. 

"That's enough of that," she said, voice steely in its resolve. "The last thing we need today is a fistfight."

"Sorry, mother," Jarrod said, immediately contrite. 

"Sorry, mother," Nick muttered in turn, the fury simmering in his eyes dimming just a touch as he sat down beside Audra, laying a hand on her shoulder. 

"Heath would not want us to carry on like this," Victoria said. "He would want us to..." she blinked back tears and drew in a shuddering breath, jerking out of the comforting hand that Jarrod laid on her arm. She had to be strong for her children, not the other way around. 

"He'd want us to carry on with our lives, not bicker like little children," Victoria finished her thought, head held high. 

Later, after they'd all gone to bed, she'd remember her late son, taken from them in an explosion at one of their mines (oh how she hated the damnable things), what he'd meant to her in the short amount of time that she'd had with him, and weep in the sanctity of her own room, like she'd done when her husband had died. Like she'd done when she'd lost her mother and father. Like it seemed she was destined to do all her life -- weep in solitude. 

"We need to send word to Eugene," Jarrod said when the silence had grown thick and uncomfortable around them, the only sound that of Audra's crying wound down to tired hiccoughs. 

Audra was exhausted from her crying jag and Victoria envied her for it. She envied her daughter's quick release, the way she could weep openly. But Victoria was the proud matriarch of the family, the backbone (Nick would argue this point if she ever dared to voice it with the acerbic young man; Jarrod would probably do the same, believing himself, as the eldest son, to be the new head of the household after his father's death). Whether her boys acknowledged it or not, it was she who ran the household.

"Hea--" Victoria drew in a sharp breath at her slip-up, and closed her eyes, picturing her appropriated son, smile, just like that of his father's, on his lips, whole and handsome, not crushed and broken underneath rock and rubble, body, face unrecognizable in death. 

"Mother?" Jarrod asked, hand on her shoulder.

"Nick, would you mind taking your sister up to her room?" Victoria said, recovering her voice, opening her eyes. 

Nodding, Nick pulled Audra to her feet and guided her toward the stairs. She leaned heavily on her older brother, and Victoria wished that she still had someone she could lean heavily on, someone she could turn to and weep against. Nick whispered something in his sister's ear that had her smiling, and Victoria envied that as well, though it pained her heart to envy her daughter and son their closeness. 

"Mother, is there anything I can do?" Jarrod asked.

Victoria shook her head, not quite trusting her voice just yet. She patted Jarrod's hand and offered him a smile. 

"Do you want me to contact Eugene?" he asked. He had always been such a good boy, so responsible. 

"I'll do it," Victoria said, straightening her spine, ignoring the way that her voice caught on the words. "It's something a mother should do."

"I'm here for you, mother," Jarrod said. "You don't have to do any of this alone."

"Thank you, Jarrod," Victoria said, smiling, comforting her oldest. 

"I know that Heath would have been here for you if it had been one of us," Jarrod said. 

Though she hated the thought as soon as it entered her head, Victoria pictured Heath sitting on the couch beside her, holding her in the way that Jarrod clearly wants to, but can't. Was it so strange to be better able to  accept comfort from the son not born to her than her own flesh and blood?

"I'm sorry, Jarrod," Victoria said, leaving the rest unspoken, knowing that her eldest understood in the tight smile that he offered her. 

"It's okay," Jarrod said, though it wasn't okay. 

He'd always been the most agreeable of her children. The one she could count on to do the right thing, even to his own hurt. It wasn't fair of her not to lean on him now, but she couldn't bring herself to do it, not when she kept picturing Heath sitting beside her, happy and whole. 

"No, it's not," Victoria says. She'd never been one to skirt around the truth. "It's not okay, and it won't be okay for a long time. You know I hate the mines, and I hate that Heath was taken from us by one."

Jarrod nodded. "I know, mother," he said, reaching for her hand and enveloping it with his own larger ones. 

"It was an accident," he said, shaking his head, voice cracking. "He wasn't supposed to be in there."

"None of you is ever supposed to be anywhere whenever you get hurt, but you are and you do," Victoria said, more angry than sad. Nick had come by his quick temper quite honestly. "The lot of you seem to think that you're impervious to danger, that you're invincible. You aren't."

"I know," Jarrod said, rubbing her knuckles with his thumb. 

Shaking her head, Victoria pushed away from Jarrod and stood. "No, you don't know. None of you know what it's like to sit at home and hear, from a stranger, that one of you is in danger, or hurt, or, or dead. You don't know."

"Mother," Jarrod said, standing, pulling her into his arms and holding her.

In spite of her resolve not to lean on any of her children, to be strong, Victoria let out a sob of anger, of deep, cutting loss, of frustration, and of sorrow. She didn't let loose the torrent building up in her chest, but instead stood, wrapped up in her son's arms, and listened to his strong, steady heartbeat, let it ground her. It could have just as easily been Jarrod caught in the explosion, or Nick, or all three of her boys. She took a steadying breath and tried not to entertain the image of all three boys, bloodied, broken, dead, that her mind supplied for her.

"Maybe you should retire to your room as well," Jarrod said. 

Victoria shook her head. "There's still a lot to do, I've got arrangements to make, your brother to fetch --"

"I can take care of all of that," Jarrod said. "Let me...please?"

"Take care of what?"

Victoria's heart jumped to her throat and her legs grew weak. If it wasn't for Jarrod's arms around her, she would have fallen. 

The voice was weak, pained, but it was a voice that, though she'd only known it for a short time, she would never mistake as the voice of another. 

"Heath," Victoria did not even try to mask the anguish in her voice as she pushed away from Jarrod's hold, loose in his own disbelief, and ran to the son she'd thought she'd lost. The son she'd refused to mourn just yet.

He was bruised and bloodied, but he was whole, and he was smiling, and Victoria, uncaring of her boy's injuries, reached for her son and pulled him into a crushing hug, ignoring the pained gasp and Jarrod's prying hands. All that mattered was that Heath had returned to them from the dead.

"Mother," Jarrod said. "You need to let him breathe." There was relief and a touch of humor in his voice as Victoria finally let go of Heath and allowed Jarrod to help his injured brother to the sofa. 

"Nick!" Victoria called, though she needn't have shouted so loudly as Nick, hearing the commotion, was already striding down the stairs, a look of disbelief and joy on his face. 

"Fetch the doctor," Victoria ordered. 

"He's really alive?" Nick asked. 

"Heath, you're alive," Audra shouted from the top of the stairs, swaying slightly, clutching at the railing. Though she was weak with relief, her happiness at Heath's return from the dead was evident in the smile that lit up her face and the way she nearly flew down the stairs to crush her brother in a hug before he'd made it to the sofa. 

Nick slapped Heath on the back before pulling him into a hug, the grin on his face near to splitting in his delight at having Heath back with them, alive. They'd expected a body to be returned to them, eventually, but not this. Victoria was overwhelmed with warring feelings, the chief most of which was absolute joy. 

"Alright, let your brother go, he's injured and needs to lie down," Victoria said, helping Jarrod lay Heath on the sofa, tenderly touching Heath's face, tracing a thin line of red that ran from eye to jaw and reveling in the fact that her son was not dead, that he'd returned to them alive. 

"I'm sorry for worrying you, mother," Heath said, always polite, always putting others ahead of himself, eyelids fluttering in exhaustion. 

Shaking her head, Victoria shushed him, and ran her fingers through his dusty hair. Tears slipped, unchecked, down her face, and she let them. They were tears of alleviation, not of despair, tears that would not mark her as weak, would not require support from one of her children. Tears that she would not have to hide, or shed, locked up in the confines of her room.

"Hush, now," Victoria said, wiping away some of the dirt on Heath's face, feeling an unnatural warmth radiating from him. 

It would be days, maybe weeks, before Heath returned to full health, but that was okay. Everything was okay because he was alive, returned to her, to them, everything else would sort itself out. He would recover, she'd make certain of that. So would Jarrod and Nick and Audra. 

"We've got you," Victoria said. "You're safe. You're home."

"You're my home, mother, you all are," Heath said, voice trailing off into a whisper as his eyes lost the battle to stay open and he slipped off into sleep, Victoria, Audra and Jarrod by his side, keeping a happy vigil while Nick fetched the doctor. 

"You're our home, too, son," Victoria said, gripping Heath's fingers tightly in her own, foolishly thinking she could keep him safe that way. 

She kissed his forehead and wiped away her tears. Sitting on the sofa, she placed Heath's head in her lap and marveled at the miracle that she had been given. Audra sat at the other end of the sofa and placed Heath's feet in her lap. Jarrod helped remove his brother's torn and tattered boots, and then his socks, which had protected his feet, they appeared to be the only portion of his body that had not suffered injury.

The doctor confirmed what Victoria already knew, that Heath's recovery would take time, that, while he looked like death warmed over, none of his injuries were fatal. 

"Time and love," he'd said as he took his leave of the Barkleys. "That's what your boy needs."

"And that's what he'll be getting," Victoria assured the doctor. It was the very thing that she'd wanted to give Heath the moment that he entered her life. The very thing that he'd rebuffed at first, but had been slowly starting to accept. 

"From all of us," Audra further assured the doctor, Nick and Jarrod standing tall beside her, faces somber with their own unspoken promises. 

"Good," the doctor said, waving as he bid the Barkleys adieu. "Good."

_ Yes, it is good, _ Victoria thought as she returned to her children, mind already whirring with plans for how she, and they, would help nurse Heath back to health, and reaffirm their love and acceptance to him. 

He was never going to doubt their love again, never doubt that this was his home, no matter how far he roamed, even to the depths of a greedy grave, for they would love him back, again and again, even from Hades.

 


End file.
